


Nothing Else Matters

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: do not stand at my grave and cry/i am not there; i did not die [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Puns, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Drugs, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Mental Health Issues, No Incest, Nursery Rhyme References, Oreos, Panic Attacks, Pre-Canon, Sick Character, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic, Singing, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, Survival, Vomiting, Withdrawal, just a little, listen he's doing his best, or something like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26555380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Klaus deals with turning twenty-one with the ghost of his sixteen-year-old brother haunting him.  Does he deal with it well?  Not at all.  Does he wish that things were different?  With all his heart.  Does he get through it in the end?  Yeah.He always does.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: do not stand at my grave and cry/i am not there; i did not die [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931251
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	Nothing Else Matters

**Author's Note:**

> I have this theory that Klaus has gone through periods of being really dependent on Ben and periods of trying to push Ben away, especially in the first few years after Ben's death. This fic is one of the latter.

Okay, so real talk—Klaus has some trouble with a little thing called ‘limits’. So sue him, it’s hard to tell sometimes—okay, a lot of the time—where the line is between _still okay_ and _way too far_. Like, it’s okay when he’s been awake a day or two. But it’s too far, too long, when he can’t remember the last time he slept. Things get blurry between ‘high’ and ‘overdosing’, between ‘tipsy’ and ‘alcohol poisoning’, between ‘skipped breakfast’ and ‘too long since his last meal’. And—well—sometimes Klaus just doesn’t care. He’s never had that instinct that tells people when to stop—a conscience or whatever—or if he did, it was well before his veritable swan-dive off the deep end of ‘respectable’ and into ‘addiction’ so… you can see why there might be a bit of an issue there. He’s always gone a little too far. Been a little too much. You know. Just a day in the life of the Séance, daddy’s disappointing Number Four.

Like, say… now, for instance. The pangs of his stomach are hard to hear over the sweet dulcet tones of those last two pills singing through his bloodstream, but they’re becoming more insistent by the minute. He really can’t remember the last time he ate, or slept, or—a lot of things, really. Time is patchy, and his limbs are floaty, and his heart is a flutter in his chest—a little faster and he thinks it’ll take right off.

It’s an interesting feeling. He laughs. Then, already far past his limits but entirely unaware, he accepts the oreo that his fair-weather friend—what’s your name?—ah, right—his fair-weather friend, Kelly, pulls out of her purse along with the blunt.

He doesn’t know how many he eats. Too many to be healthy, though the lack-of is undoubtedly worse. His stomach hurts, which he takes to mean that he needs to eat more, so he does. He loses count at eleven.

The oreos, though Klaus doesn’t know it at the time, are to be his ultimate downfall. 

Or maybe it’s the sloppy make-outs with the host of the party that he had his buddies throw to celebrate him officially turning twenty-one.

Definitely couldn’t be the three hours he spends sitting in a subway car afterward with his face pressed against the window, trying to remember which stop is his.

…Unless, of course, it is.

But whatever. It’s no use speculating. Not now. It’s too late. His downfall is to come, and there is nothing—absolutely _nothing_ —he can do but let it.

***

It happens late that night. Or early that morning. It’s hard to tell that, too, especially with the blankets that are hung over the windows to hide the movement from inside the building that Klaus is kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really-squatting-in-right-now-because-he-knows-the-owners-and-they-didn’t-say-no-exactly-when-he-asked, but that’s not the point here. The point is that Klaus’s downfall, his demise, his _what-have-you_ is upon him. Twenty-one years old and legally allowed to drink—but not legally allowed to do coke!—and it begins as he wakes with a start from a dream about—well, it doesn’t matter. He’s not there anymore. Hasn’t been in a long time. He’s home _sweet_ home.

He laughs a little to himself at that. He was so… so… _sequestered_ as a kid. It wasn’t until he got out of the Academy that he got to experience the rest of the world—and in doing so found that the world, in its entirety, could be his home. All it took was, you know, giving up everything he’d ever had and every truth he’d ever known.

He hums, and goes to turn over on the couch that’s serving as his makeshift bed. It’s then that he makes the startling realization that—yep—those sure are the shakes. His hands are trembling and he’s got the sweats and his stomach is tied up in knots and okay, yeah, he’s gonna need to take something sooner rather than later.

With a groan, he turns over once again, flopping unceremoniously onto the floor to start feeling his way to his coat pocket and, more importantly, the little baggie of pills stashed inside of it. His stomach protests at the movement, and he shudders with a wince as it wrenches up a sweet-and-spicy oreo-and-bile burp from down in the depths somewhere. 

“Or-ee- _oh_ how I’m regretting that last oreo,” he says aloud, and then jumps as a voice hums, coming out of the darkness behind him.

“Didn’t think you’d be up so soon,” Ben says, like he’s a TV father who has just caught one of his children coming home after curfew. The only thing he lacks is the corporealness to turn on a light so that Klaus can see the disappointment on his face.

Klaus huffs, pressing his sweaty cheek to the floor. He doesn’t know why his brother even bothers. It’s not like Klaus is gonna respond. He takes a few deep breaths, slow and steady, before making another bid for his drugs.

He makes it with minimal insides-turning-to-outsides, which is really for the best for everyone involved. His stomach is none too happy about the pill(s) he forces down, but it’s fine—he’ll feel better in a second. 

Any second now.

Aaany…

…second.

“You know, I don’t think that’s going to help,” Ben says, as Klaus moans to himself and shakes out another pill. He slips a hand between his torso and the floor to palm at the clammy skin of his stomach as if he can soothe the burbling under the surface. So maybe drinking AND doing benzos was not the brightest idea he’s ever had. And maybe another pill isn’t going to help. It’s true, Ben might be right about that. But then again, Klaus is _not_ listening to Ben right now, and he’s never known when to stop, anyway, so he swallows down the (third, or possibly fourth) pill with slightly more difficulty than the last and rolls onto his back, waiting for something, anything, to kick in. 

The only thing that does is his nausea, inching up his throat.

He swallows, then swallows again. Oh, man. Something is really not sitting right. He peers down into the baggie in his palm, hand wavering, and tries to think through the cramps. He really shouldn’t take any more—he’s pretty sure he’s already pressing up against that limit, even if it’s hard to tell—but he hasn’t felt this bad since the last time he couldn’t pay for his pills. He doesn’t know what to _do_.

His stomach, thankfully or not, makes the decision for him. He claps a hand over his mouth and scrambles for the building’s bathroom, pushing past Ben as he does. Ben shakes his head and follows, because Ben always seems to follow when Klaus needs him least. 

“I’m serious, Klaus,” he says, as Klaus slaps at the light switch. “I think you’re—”

Klaus closes the door in his brother’s face.

“—sick,” Ben finishes with a sigh, stepping through the cheap wood. 

“Fuck,” Klaus says aloud to no one in particular, crashing down onto his knees in front of the nearest toilet. His stomach _rolls_ , and he frantically pushes the lid out of the way so he can lean over the bowl, panting. The pills are beginning to hit, but it’s not a good feeling—it’s a thin, floaty feeling, like his limbs aren’t all the way attached to his body. His head swims and his stomach churns and slick saliva builds in his mouth and he’s suddenly afraid that if he doesn’t throw up soon he’s going to pass out and asphyxiate on his own vomit.

It’s okay. It’s okay. He can get through this. He spits—once, twice—in the hopes that it will help things along. It doesn’t. He groans. “Damn oreos…” he mutters. “A rookie mistake. No, no, wait—a _cookie_ mistake.” He snickers to himself. In return, his stomach rolls again. 

Still nothing comes of it. 

…God, he’s going to have to put his fingers down his throat, isn’t he?

Sitting back on his heels, Klaus presses his palms to his closed eyes. Hello, goodbye—he’s not really a self-conscious kind of person but he can feel Ben’s eyes boring into the sweat beading on the back of his neck and he just… he feels so sick right now and he knows Ben is just _salivating_ for an I-told-you-so moment because Ben knows best, he always does, and Klaus doesn’t know why he doesn’t listen to him, really. Except actually he does. It just… fuck. It sounds _childish_ when he thinks about it. How upset he got over the fact that Ben is never going to turn twenty-one, he means. Whenever he thinks about Ben and their birthday and the fact that Ben died over four years ago the whole reality of his brother being a _ghost_ crashes down over his head, and the only way he can deal with it is to pretend that Ben isn’t here, even though he’s always here, and in all honesty when Klaus conjured his brother just after said brother’s funeral at the ripe old age of sixteen and convinced him not to go into the light he didn’t think that one day he’d be here, in this situation, just after his twenty-first birthday, with Ben frowning down at him as he contemplates forcing himself to vomit just so that he doesn’t wind up passing out in his own puke.

…It’s not exactly an ideal situation.

Klaus sighs. Then, raising his head, he says, “If there were any ghosts nearby that I were talking to, I would remind them that we’ve had conversations about hovering before.”

Ben snorts from behind his hood. “You’re puking, not jerking off. I’m not going to leave you to drown in your own vomit alone, dude. Unless you take your dick out I’m staying.”

Ugh. Stupid conscientious caring asshole brother…

In the end Klaus doesn’t have to stick his fingers down his throat, because it’s right then that it happens, taking both of them almost completely by surprise. One moment Klaus is muttering about ghosts under his breath and the next his stomach has forced up a wave of blackish oreo sludge, so quick and sudden that he nearly misses the toilet bowl despite it being right in front of him. His head swims as he leans forward, blinking sluggishly, trying to figure out where the hell that _came_ from. He spots one of the pills, half-dissolved, before he heaves again. And then again. And then _again_.

The bout tapers off after that, and Klaus gasps in oxygen. His eyes are watering from the force of it and he still feels weird and floaty, unsure if his stomach is done yet. Ben is silent behind him, but true to his word he hasn’t left. Klaus spits into the disgusting toilet water and flushes the mess down the drain, as if flushing his sins away will make this night any less miserable than it already is. And it’s only going to get worse, he realizes, if he can’t keep down his drugs.

He groans, tipping sideways to press his sweaty cheek against the wall of the bathroom stall. Then he sits up again, taking the risk of moving away from the toilet to feel his way back toward his coat.

“You can’t be serious,” Ben says, following once again. “For the love of—the drugs aren’t going to stay down, Klaus.”

 _I know that_ , Klaus doesn’t snap, in a rare and impressive display of self-control that is in no way just stubbornness. He’s still not talking to Ben, no matter how much his brother wheedles and bugs. Not facing that tonight, nope! Just gonna bury it somewhere deep, _deep_ inside where he doesn’t have to deal with it. Swallowing heavily, Klaus busies himself instead with pulling his headphones from his coat pocket, shaky hands pushing the jack into his crappy tape player and pressing play. He settles the headphones over his ears, letting himself melt into the sounds of the mixtape he managed to swipe from one of his exes before said ex kicked him to the curb. 

It’s nice, in a distant kind of way. It helps hold him together as the drugs and the nausea fight to pull him apart. He crawls back to the bathroom, not sure how long he’s going to make it before he needs to throw up again, and curls up on his side on the cold tiles. He can’t hear Ben’s nagging like this, can’t understand the ghosts and the specters through the haze of drugs, and when he closes his eyes it’s almost like he’s blissfully alone. For once in his wretched life, he only has to worry about himself instead of his entourage of ghoulies.

***

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep. He’s not sure how he manages, really, with the distinct unease of his insides ebbing and flowing like the tide. All he knows is that he wakes for the second time to muffled silence and the distant susserations of ghosts growing ever, ever closer. His stomach cramps and his mouth tastes like death and good god, he kind of wishes he didn’t exist right about now. For not the first time death is starting to look real inviting.

Klaus giggles at the thought of joining the ghosts for good, rolling onto his back. Ben is still there, frowning down at him—Klaus stares past him, pretending that he isn’t there. The battery of his tape player has died, and unfortunately for him that’s one ghost he can’t conjure up. He blinks at the bumpy yellow ceiling for a long moment before his stomach cramps more urgently, and then he hauls himself up to lean over the toilet once more, breathing slowly through his mouth.

Vomiting is worse, now that the drugs are wearing off. He can actually feel his stomach clenching now, and his head pounds in time with his quickening pulse. He’s hot, then cold, then hot again and it feels like it’s never going to _end_. The ghosts flitting about the edges of his consciousness are only getting louder. He can’t escape. He can’t _breathe_.

“Can’t have that much more to puke up,” he says aloud, huddling in front of the toilet and forcing air into his lungs. Gotta stay positive. His hair is damp with sweat, hanging lank over his forehead—he scrapes it back with a shaking hand. When that doesn’t help he starts to hum the last song he remembers listening to, mumbling the words he knows, low and self-soothing. 

He jumps despite himself as someone starts yelling in the next room over.

“Right on time,” Klaus mutters, crawling to the row of sinks and fishing around for the pack of cigarettes he left on the bathroom’s counter a few days ago. He’s got no earthly clue if nicotine helps with an upset stomach—it certainly doesn’t do much for the ghosts—but he’ll take what he can get at this point. If only he had a joint he’d smoke that, too, but alas he only has the pills, and he knows from his experience earlier that that they’re not going to do much good. 

He breathes out a lungful of smoke, watching it dissipate slowly into the air. It must be morning now—he’s made it past his birthday, go him. He tries to make a joke about it, for his own benefit, but his brain is sluggish and he hardly gets anywhere before he accidentally chokes on the smoke and starts to cough, the whole ordeal devolving too quickly into gags and then heaves.

For the first time since Klaus woke, Ben speaks, saying, “…Maybe you should go to Diego.”

Klaus spits, snuffing the cigarette out against the base of the toilet as he does. He wouldn’t deign respond to that even if he _was_ talking to Ben. Go to Diego… who does Ben think he is, exactly? All Diego would do is ship him off to rehab, and he doesn’t need rehab, thank you very much.

Alas, once Ben has it in his head to see one of their siblings he so very rarely backs off. “He can help, Klaus,” he says, and Klaus can just barely see his large, pleading eyes in the corner of his vision. “He won’t kick you out if he sees how bad you’re feeling. He’ll take care of you, I know he will—”

Klaus groans, breaking his own no-responses rule. “God would you just—just please, _please_ shut up,” he says, pressing his hands into his eyeballs.

Ben huffs. “Fine. But only because you asked nicely.”

They fall into a tense silence for a bit after that, Klaus hoping that his gruff dismissal will convince his brother to stand up and walk off. But of course, no such luck. Ben was always too good for stalking off in a huff. God. 

Fine. In that case he’ll just have to try harder. He grinds his back teeth together, forcing up a mouthful of vitriol that comes out as, “Why are you still _here?_ Go _away_ already.”

Ben hums, and the sound of him turning a page in that wretched book he carries around with him feels like sandpaper in Klaus’s ears.

Klaus snarls, throwing himself to the floor and curling up in a ball. “You know there’s nothing you can do. Do you _like_ watching me hurl up my insides?”

“Maybe I’m just a masochist,” Ben says, even as ever.

Anger is exhausting. Klaus never understood how Diego could stand to be so angry all the time. He sighs and breathes it out, letting it go. “Ha,” he says instead. “I called it.”

“Whatever you say.” Another page. There’s no way he’s reading that fast. 

“For real, why are you still here?”

For a moment it looks like Ben isn’t going to bother to respond. Then he sighs, and the book disappears. “I just… you’re the only one I can talk to, you know? I might not be able to rub your back or get you a glass of water but I can be here. So you’re not alone. Can you just… let me do that?”

“…Fine,” Klaus says. _Happy birthday_ , he doesn’t say. He stares at nothing for a long moment, listening to his upset stomach gurgling inside him. Then he sighs and levers himself up to get to the toilet once more.

***

The sickness, whatever it is, withdrawal or a bad batch of drugs or the flu, only gets worse from there. An hour turns into two turns into five, and just when Klaus thinks he might be getting over the urge to puke every five seconds it comes back with a vengeance, giving him no reprieve. He’s burning and chilled and shaky and lethargic and quite frankly he’d claw his skin off right here and now if it meant he got some damn relief from the shitty _fucking_ day he’s having. He knows it’s not going to help, but fuck if he isn’t this close to trying it out just in case.

He groans, shivering where he’s laying. Ben is still there, sitting at his side. He looks like he’s sucking a lemon but still hasn’t moved an inch, and Klaus just can’t find it in himself to be mad anymore. Especially when Ben rests his chilled hands at the back of Klaus’s neck when Klaus starts sweating through his crop top. God, that’s nice.

What isn’t nice are the _other_ ghosts. Pushy bastards, the lot of them—they’re getting louder by the hour and Klaus is ninety percent sure he’s going to friggin’ self-destruct if he has to listen to one more asshole screeching his name. 

He makes it another hour, more or less. Time is starting to get weird and sticky, the seconds lurching past in dizzying waves that make him want to vomit, which might not be saying much because everything is making him feel like he wants to vomit right now but is still a miserable experience. He’s curled up with his knees to his chest and his forehead pressed against the cool porcelain of the toilet and he just—he just— _fuck_ —

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears drip down off his nose. That’s embarrassing. He scrubs a shaking hand up his cheek, trying to clean the wetness off but more is coming and he hasn’t felt this bad in a while now and he’s never really _wanted_ to kill himself but sometimes he wonders if it would be the better option, if maybe it would be the easier way out, if maybe, one day, he’ll just _give in_ and _do it_. He’s a flake, a junkie, an addict—it would be kind of fitting for the Séance to dip out of life early.

He blurts out a giggle at the thought, and the sound is like a mirror shattering in the ugly yellow bathroom. Ben jerks his head over, one hand reaching though they both know he cannot touch. He asks if Klaus is okay and that’s it—Klaus is gone. He laughs and laughs and laughs and he doesn’t know why he tries anymore, because the one person who stays by his side is dead and every time he opens his eyes there is death, more and more of it seemingly growing by the second to crowd into him from all sides and he—can’t—breathe—

It’s then, as his vision tunnels and black spots float in front of his eyes, that he hears it. A melody, sung in French, that tugs at the very creases of his memory. He gasps, clutching his stomach as he listens, the words wavering in his ears like he’s under water.

“ _Fr_ _ère Jacques, Frère Jacques,_

_Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?_

_Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines_ _…_

 _Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong._ _”_

It clicks, after a long and disorienting moment, that he knows that voice. It’s Ben, singing softly at his side. Klaus listens, rapt, as he repeats the rhyme a few times, until Ben realizes that Klaus has calmed down and trails off into nothing. He then clears his throat awkwardly, avoiding eye contact as Klaus tilts his head to the side to look directly at him for the first time in days. 

“What was that?” Klaus asks, voice raspy, wiping his face off and focusing on his brother rather than the other ghosts clamoring insistently for his attention.

“Sorry,” Ben says, as if that’s an adequate response.

Klaus huffs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like… I remember that. From somewhere. What was it?”

Ben pulls at the ties of his hoodie, ducking his face a bit. “One of our nannies used to sing it when we were really little. I learned it when I was learning French.”

“I didn’t know you could sing.” Klaus sniffles a little to himself, shuffling where he sits so he’s facing his brother a little more. “I’m going to tell everyone.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “You don’t talk to anyone except Diego. Besides, no one would believe you even if you did.”

“…Still gonna do it,” Klaus says, and fuck, he’s _missed this_. Missed snarking back and forth, missed Ben’s humor, missed _Ben_. It hurts, having Ben so close yet so far away, too far to touch, but all the same there’s something familiar in that hurt. Knowing his brother is here—even if it’s a version of him that was killed at sixteen and who will never really grow up—anchors Klaus like nothing else. He just… for once, for _one little moment_ , he gets to have the comfort of having his brother next to him. 

Klaus takes a deep breath, whistling softly as he blows it back out between pursed lips. It’s like… the gravy on a good meal. It’s more than Klaus ever expected, more than he ever deserved. And he’s selfish, he knows this. He _knows_ he should have let Ben go into the light all those years ago. But Klaus… well. Klaus has trouble with limits. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, where the line is. High and overdosing, sleepy and sleep deprived, alive and dead, right and wrong… it’s all a mess to him. But right now, with Ben sitting at his side, Klaus doesn’t have to think about how the two of them came to be here, in this situation, on opposite sides of the divide between life and death. He doesn’t have to face the choices he’s made, the mistakes that haunt him. He’s just Klaus, and Ben is just Ben, and it’s the two of them against the world, and nothing else matters.

“Hey Ben,” Klaus says.

“Yeah?” Ben asks.

“Sing it again, would you?”

“…Alright. Just for you.”

Yeah. Nothing else matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Cheers!


End file.
